TestMax Education Platform

Challenge

When I joined TestMax, the existing mobile app had a heavily skeuomorphic design that felt outdated. The visual style, inspired by early mobile trends, relied on excessive textures and shadows, making it feel cluttered. More importantly, the navigation and content structure were unintuitive, creating friction in the learning experience.

Approach

I modernized the design by shifting to a flat, streamlined aesthetic that prioritized clarity and ease of use. Beyond visual updates, I restructured the information hierarchy to ensure students could navigate lessons, practice exams, and study plans effortlessly. Additionally, I expanded the platform's architecture to accommodate multiple exam types, which enabled the introduction of the LSAT prep course.

Impact

• Improved user satisfaction, as evidenced by increased positive App Store reviews.
• Boosted retention rates by making study sessions more intuitive and engaging.
• Expanded the platform’s potential, allowing TestMax to scale beyond bar exam prep.
• Strengthened brand perception, making it easier to market to new students.

Challenge

The original message board was a simple discussion tool tied to specific content like video lessons and practice questions. While functional, it lacked essential features that fostered organic community interaction, such as open discussion threads and the ability to like or engage with comments. Additionally, it had little SEO value, as discussions were siloed within the app and not indexed by search engines.

Approach

I led the complete redesign and development of a new message board system. This involved:

• Introducing general discussion spaces where students could ask questions beyond specific course content.
• Adding modern engagement features like upvoting, pinned discussions, and instructor highlights.
• Optimizing the system for SEO, ensuring discussions would be indexed and drive organic traffic.

Impact

• Increased student engagement, leading to more peer-to-peer interaction.
• Enhanced discoverability of TestMax content via organic search.
• Strengthened brand loyalty by fostering a sense of community within the platform.
• Provided students with faster, more diverse support beyond instructor-led guidance.

Challenge

Private tutoring is one of the most effective ways to improve test scores, but scheduling and managing sessions is often a cumbersome experience. The challenge was to design an intuitive portal that seamlessly connected students with qualified tutors while managing scheduling, payments, and communication in a frictionless way.

Approach

This was one of the most complex UX challenges I tackled at TestMax, as it required designing distinct interfaces for students, tutors, and administrators. Key design decisions included:

• A simple, familiar scheduling interface inspired by best practices from tools like Calendly.
• Integrated messaging to facilitate direct communication between students and tutors.
• An administrator dashboard for TestMax staff to oversee and manage sessions efficiently.
• Seamless integration with the main TestMax learning experience to keep everything within a single ecosystem.

Impact

• The tutoring program quickly became one of TestMax’s most profitable verticals.
• Students benefited from personalized support, improving their test outcomes.
• The streamlined experience minimized friction, leading to higher adoption rates among users.

While TestMax initially focused on self-paced learning, the demand for live instruction grew as competitors introduced similar offerings. The challenge was to design a live class system that would seamlessly integrate into the existing platform while providing a compelling experience for both live attendees and those watching recorded sessions later.

Approach

To ensure students could easily engage with live instruction, I focused on:

• Designing a clear, intuitive schedule display that highlighted upcoming live sessions.
• Implementing an easy-to-access "Join Live Session" button to minimize barriers to participation.
• Creating a well-organized archive of past sessions, enhanced with robust filtering and categorization to ensure students could quickly find relevant content.

Impact

• Provided a competitive advantage by offering live instruction alongside self-paced learning.
• Strengthened student engagement by enabling real-time interaction with instructors.
• Successfully used free live sessions as a lead-generation tool, attracting new prospective students to the platform.